Guppy Ecology, Sexual Selection and Sensory Bias
Guppies choose mixtures of simple perceptual opposites such as bright and dark colors when they mate.
Topics
∘ Ecology
∘ Feeding
∘ Predators
∘ Habitat Interactions
∘ Social Behavior
∘ Sex
∘ Sexual Selection
∘ Male Competition
∘ Direct Benefits
∘ Good Genes
∘ Sensory Bias
∘ Works Cited
Ecology
The Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata Peters, 1859) is a ray-finned fish in the cyprinodont family poeciliidae, Greek for “with different colors” (Froese and Pauly 2008). It’s also known as the “millions fish” or the “rainbow fish.” Males grow to a maximum size of about 3.5 cm, females to about 5 cm standard length. Guppies have no dorsal spines, seven to eight dorsal soft rays, no anal spines, and eight to ten anal soft rays (Rodriguez 1997, Froese and Pauly 2008). In the poeciliid family there are 293 extant species living in freshwater and brackish habitats at low altitudes in the tropics from the eastern United States to…
